The medial and lateral geniculate nuclei (MGN, LGN), which are involved in relaying auditory and visual sensory information, were smaller in people with 22q11.2 DS. While neither the total volume of the thalamus nor its developmental growth trajectory differed between 22q11.2 DS and control subjects, the researchers found differences in specific thalamic sub-nuclei. Credit: Elsevier, 2020 (Creative Commons license, CC-BY). For this longitudinal study, the researchers collected brain scans every three years from subjects aged 8 to 35, with each receiving between 1 and 4 scans.ĭepiction of a working theory on the thalamic circuitry that is involved in psychotic symptoms in individuals with the genetic disorder, 22q11 deletion syndrome. In the current study, the authors sought to parse more specifically how the thalamus and its connections to other brain areas differed in people with 22q11.2 DS – with and without auditory hallucinations (AH) – from the control group. An estimated one percent of people with schizophrenia have this disorder.Ībnormalities in the thalamus, a brain region recognized as the “gateway” for sensory information coming into the brain, had already been implicated in schizophrenia and hallucinations. People with 22q11.2 DS are at far higher risk than the general public to develop schizophrenia and to experience sensory hallucinations. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the researchers compared brain structures and their connectivity in 110 healthy control subjects and in 120 subjects with a genetic disorder, named 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, or DS. “Our results demonstrate aberrant development of the thalamic nuclei involved in sensory processing and immature pattern of thalamo-cortical connectivity to the brain’s auditory regions,” said lead author Valentina Mancini, MD. The study from researchers led by Stephan Eliez, MD, PhD, at Geneva University, Switzerland, appears in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, published by Elsevier. How they arise in the brain has been unclear, but new research indicates that altered brain connectivity between sensory and cognitive processing areas may be responsible. Auditory hallucinations, a phenomenon in which people hear voices or other sounds in the absence of external stimuli, are a feature of schizophrenia and some other neuropsychiatric disorders.
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